This article will outline 3 simple steps you can take to improve your SEO. It’s particularly relevant for new websites, but even existing sites can benefit from these 3 tips.

What is SEO?

SEO is search engine optimisation. That is: optimising “everything” on and around your website for search engines so that you rank as highly as possible in relevant search results. SEO work never stops – there are always things which can be done to improve your rankings.

Hang on – haven’t you already optimised my website for me?

Yes! But that’s only part of the story.

When we build your website we’ll look at what you want to rank for and agree some keywords and phrases that should be woven into your content. What you write is the most important thing. We’ll optimise the site, making sure the content is written in the best way possible, that images on the pages reflect the SEO terms, and ensure that the pages are structured in the best possible way. This is what we call ‘on page SEO’. It’s a lot of work, but it’s only the beginning … (NB We also build the site for speed from the ground up and make sure it’s fully accessible. To find out more about why this is important for SEO, see what we cover in our WordPress Health Check)

So why do I not appear in searches?

Google looks at new websites with a healthy sense of cynicism. Are you really who you say you are? Are you a legitimate business? New sites don’t just immediately start appearing on page 1 of the searches.

How does it tell you’re legitimate? Well, good content, and meaningful links on the site help a lot. But what we really need to do is start to persuade the search engines that your brand new website is a trustworthy one. We need to increase your Domain Authority …

What is Domain Authority and Why is it Important?

Domain authority is a score given to a web domain ranging from 0 to 100. The higher the score, the more reputable the site is deemed to be – and the higher it will rank in search queries. You can check your domain authority using this free tool from Moz: https://moz.com/domain-analysis

Here’s a snapshot of ours at the time of writing:

A new website has a domain authority of 0. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to increase that! And we’re going to tell you how.

3 Steps to increasing your Domain Authority

Step 1 – Build out Your Business Profile Online with these 3 directories

The single best thing you can do to kick start your SEO strategy is to create an online business profile and start getting reviews. Here’s how:

Create a Google Business Profile

Sign up for a google business profile – this is an absolute must do! You can find out how to set your business up here: https://support.google.com/business/answer/10514137?hl=en-GB

Use this as an opportunity – and set up products on the page which reflect what your business does – eg web design. Each product gives you an opportunity to include relevant key words. Make sure to link to your website!

Get Customer Reviews

Next up get some reviews on there – ask people to review your business. Even better, if those reviews talk about what you do, then this is a great boost for local search results.

These 2 simple things help tell Google (and other search engines) that your website and business is real and reputable. It’s a no-brainer for any new business.

Create a Bing Places Profile

Who uses bing anymore? Well, some people still do – and more importantly, having a Bing Places listing is going to help boost your rankings. You can create your Bing listing here: https://www.bingplaces.com/

Claim your free Yell.com listing

Yell is another place you need to add your business to. You can create your free listing with Yell here: https://www.yell.com/free-listing/. A Yell listing offers 2 great benefits:

1. You can stuff your listing with loads of relevant SEO keywords and phrases
2. You can do a scan to find out where you are listed here: https://www.yell.com/connectscan/ and once you’ve done that scan you’ll get a load more free listings ideas such as Cylex. Take your time and work your way through them – get listed on as many local listings as possible.

Step 2 – Build Your Backlinks

What are backlinks, I hear you ask? Well … these are links back to your website from other sites. Backlinks show search engines that your content is important. But …. there are a couple of caveats here:

1. Remember it is quality over quantity when it comes to backlinks. A link to your site from a spammy site with a poor reputation reflects badly on you. A link from a highly trusted site, with a good domain authority, reflects well. Some of the ‘rankings juice’ from the linking site flows through to your site as a result.
2. Building backlinks takes time and effort. This is not going to be an instant win.

As you can see from the image above, building backlinks (in this case to our site) takes time. But it will pay off.

How can I build backlinks?

Great question! And there’s more than one way. The first thing we like to do is ask who your competitors are. We can study their backlinks, and this might give you some ideas. It very much depends on your business.

Links from Listings or Blogs

If you run a holiday let, for instance, then looking at local accommodation listings sites might work for you – eg Visit Eden. However if you are in a different business then perhaps there are bloggers you could approach to write an article about you and link to your site.

Step 3 – Write Specialist Content

Another way to get your site ranking highly is by writing specific content for a particular topic. This page, as an example, aims to rank for SEO. That’s a highly competitive area so could be difficult. For your business you might be able to write technical articles or blog updates which may have the potential to rank highly. This is a fantastic way to build up content on your site, and you can then share your articles and try to get people to link back to them. Remember what we said at the start – the thing that matters most of all is content. Good content, well written, optimised for SEO, will always win.

Let’s recap on those 3 Simple Steps to improve your SEO

Firstly get your business listings online – and get those customer reviews! Secondly, build up your backlinks. Thirdly write high quality content.

I can’t do this on my own. Can you help with my SEO?

Yes we can! We offer a few support packages that can help you.

Firstly our ‘Performance Pack‘ at £80 per month includes monthly SEO reporting against agreed keywords as well as loads of other added benefits such as daily offsite backups.

If that’s not right for you then you can buy our SEO report for £120 per annum.

We also offer dedicated SEO support at an hourly rate. Typically we will recommend chunking this up into 3 hour blocks. And the first thing we do is to sit down with you and work our what you want to achieve. We don’t need to boil the ocean and change everything. We focus on one thing at a time, and continually measure progress.

If you’re interested in SEO support, then please get in touch today!

Strong passwords keep you safe!

When I set up new users I use a strong password. Ideally this won’t be an issue, because you’ll be using a password manager like 1Password or NordPass or LastPass. But … if you don’t then you’ll probably want to change it to be a little more user friendly.

Please do not reuse a password from any other website, as I cannot be held responsible for a website hack due to a data breach on another website. Every site I build is as secure as I can make it – a unique, non standard login, brute force attack prevention and various other measures. But a leaked password and email combination is something I cannot protect against.

Your password should be strong, secure and unique. A ‘pass phrase’ is secure, and often more memorable – the opening line from a favourite book or poem, for example.

Here’s a link on how to change your password in WordPress. I recommend logging in to do so.
https://wordpress.org/support/article/resetting-your-password/

This is a very ‘quick start’ guide to some common WordPress Content updates you might want to make. The best bit? It’s really easy! There’s nothing to be afraid of when editing content.

Please do read it in conjunction with the WordPress official documentation! This is an excellent starting point: https://wordpress.org/support/article/wordpress-editor/

What’s Covered?

Just 2 things.

1. Logging in to your website and updating existing content
2. How to create new content, in particular posts (like this one)

Log into the WordPress admin area

To edit the website, the first thing you need to do is log in. The default wordpress login is disabled for site security. I will give you the site login url once your website is complete.

If you choose to support your own website going forward I will set you up as an administrator on the website. Should you wish me to support it, I’ll set you up with the most appropriate role so you can make content updates and manage your business (Websites where you need to manage accommodation booking require administrator access, for example). If you specifically want administrator access, I will set you up with that.

When you log in you will see a screen that looks something like this (actual websites will vary): the left hand panel is where you select what you want to do

Edit Pages and Posts

Pages and Posts are the 2 common things to edit.

Click on pages on the left hand side, and hover over the page you want to edit. Select ‘edit’ to open the “Gutenberg Block Editor”. You can read more about it here: https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/

From here you can easily update existing text, or change images on pages. To add a new text block, select the + sign in the top left and then “paragraph”.

It’s up to you how much you want to edit the site. If you break things, I can try to help fix them for you. Be careful adding new images, as they may need to be properly optimised to ensure the website loads quickly. And stay clear of code blocks (they’re easy to spot!).

Adding links to text or images can be done easily as described here: https://wordpress.com/support/wordpress-editor/links/

Top tip: always open links in a new tab if they are NOT on your own website.

Adding Links to emails or phone numbers

Linking to an email address or a phone number follows the same basic principles as above, but the link content needs to be slightly different. To link to a phone number prefix the number with tel: and to link to an email address prefix the email with mailto: – so “tel:07840940415” would be the link for our phone number, or “mailto:contact@greystokewebdesign.co.uk” for our email.

Disclaimer: this information and the screenshots were taken at a particular point in time. WordPress may have changed things, and I would urge you to consult the official links to see up to date information. WordPress online support is excellent and should nearly always be your first port of call.

Editing Tables

If you have a WordPress table on your page you can follow this guide to see how to edit one (or create a new one). https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/table-block/

If you have a TablePress table (your handover document will tell you) then please see here: https://www.greystokewebdesign.co.uk/help/tablepress/

Editing Buttons

This can be a little more complicated depending on what type of button you have! For the native WordPress button see this guide: https://wordpress.org/documentation/article/buttons-block/

If we have used Spectra buttons (these will generally have an icon on the button) then please see this guide: https://wpspectra.com/docs/spectra-buttons-block/

Adding New Posts

Typically you will want to add new content where there is an event calendar, or a news blog or other post feature on your website. Once example here is the Eden Valley Mountaineering Club website I built, which has Events, and also custom posts to allow Crag Access Information and other post types to be quickly updated and new content uploaded.

The principles are straightforward. You can navigate to the left hand menu, find the post type you want to create, and ‘add new’. Or you can navigate to the ‘all posts’ option to see a list of posts. You can then hover over one and ‘clone’ it so that you don’t start from scratch. You can then just amend the content on your new draft as required and republish. This last way has the advantage of cloning any additional information such as the post ‘category’ information.

Post categories can be used to filter posts – as an example, have a look at the Greystoke Village website, which uses different post categories to display relevant information on different pages:

The church page filters posts and events relating to the church: https://www.greystokevillage.co.uk/church/
The home page shows ‘news’ category posts: https://www.greystokevillage.co.uk/

Summary

It’s easy to add a new post or event, but sometimes the smart thing to do is clone an existing one to give you a head start and make sure you don’t forget to set any extra data like the post category. If you need to set or change category information, you can do this via the ‘quick edit’ option on the post listings page, or via the right hand menu options on the editing screen.

If in doubt, read the WordPress guide! https://wordpress.org/support/article/writing-posts/

See Also …

You might also want to have a look at these articles covering other specific types of WordPress content updates:

• Editing Media on WordPress
• Editing Modula Galleries
• Adding PDFs to WordPress
• Adding and editing Events